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Marriage Equality — Obama Shows Leadership And Courage

There is a lot of news going on today, all of the regular topics that are covered on a daily basis. There is no bigger story than the President of the United States supporting marriage equality. For years gays have been the last bastion of people that can be openly discriminated against. You can no longer discriminate against Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Women or anyone else Archie Bunker used to spout off about. But, you can still discriminate against gays. To me this is intolerable, no one should have to face discrimination. I see the gay rights movement as a civil liberties issue. The argument that it goes against family values, or the bible doesn’t like it to me are not valid arguments, just excuses. Being a gay man I know that you are born gay, its not something you learn; its not something you catch. As far as ‘praying away the gay’ thats an absurd notion and has been proven to be a complete sham. You can pray away the gay as easily as praying away the straight. Whats most interesting and most sad is that the people who are the most homophobic are the ones that have latent homosexual desires. Many scientific studies have been done over many decades; the purpose of the study was to register arousal levels in men when shown different pornographic images, images of men, women, 2 men and 2 women. Every study showed that the men who were the most homophobic were the ones that got the most aroused while seeing pictures of other naked men.

President Obama’s statement yesterday was a watershed moment. All civil liberties fights have had a turning point and I hope this is the start of people being more accepting of gays and their desire to marry. I see this issue as no different when it was illegal for whites and blacks to marry; when black people couldn’t vote, when women couldn’t vote. Mr. Obama is on the right side of history since our country always, eventually, stops discriminating against a minority. If the GOP overplays their hand they are going to really diminish their party, even more than the tea party has done it for them. Dick Cheney is for gay marriage; I wish he would make a statement today. I don’t know if Obama made his statement for cold political reasons or if he wanted to help the cause. He might have sent Joe Biden to Meet the Press to give his support as a prelude to his announcement. But, for whatever reason I am glad he made that statement and hope good comes from it. Thank you, Mr. President.